


now we see things, as in a mirror dimly

by r1ker



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-09
Updated: 2015-03-09
Packaged: 2018-03-17 04:11:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3514853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/r1ker/pseuds/r1ker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>set right after 1.14, when maroni's excursion with oswald went a little deeper than explained.</p>
            </blockquote>





	now we see things, as in a mirror dimly

**Author's Note:**

> i covered this episode on my twitter and decided why not make myself cry for the two weeks i wrote this

He and Harvey have ridden three hours out to this godforsaken abandoned home, nestled between trees in the outskirts of Gotham, to look for the penguin. Jim honestly doesn’t know why they’re putting so much effort into finding such a piece of shit but since Mooney sold Oswald out to Maroni, it’s vital they find the guy to get him to tell.

            Harvey’s got the steering wheel in a white-knuckle grip. They haven’t spoken since Harvey turned on the car and threw it into a skidding reverse out of the GCPD parking lot. The air is heavy and charged and neither wants to speak what’s on their minds at the moment.

            Jim’s staring out the window, watching winter-blown trees fly by at amazing speed, sticking his forehead against the cool glass to feel the vibration against his face. He’s a wide range of emotions, of all kinds and sorts, but he can’t pinpoint a single tangible one at this moment. Sure, he’s angry – Oswald’s a piece of shit who’s lied too much to even be sentient – and he’s frustrated, for this business between Falcone and Maroni has gone on too long not to have a bad ending. He’s waiting on them to find Oswald dead, to make the phone call to Nygma to send out a crew to collect a cold body from the bottom of the lake in the backyard.

            The driveway is empty, gravel and leaves being swept away from the asphalt where no car has sat for a few hours, maybe even days. They step out and Jim instantly starts to itch, his arms burning with the feeling of something bad impending. He can’t hear anything and he instantly assumes the worst. The only sounds he’s picking up are the whistle of the wind slamming against the ear and his own uneven breath. Still they tread on, past a broken bannister and shaky set of steps.

            Harvey breaks down the door with one shoulder and they barrel in. Harvey dives in to scope around the house and Jim follows close by, stopping to linger in rooms where blood was potentially shed. He doesn’t find anything of the sort except a rusty scrape on the ledge of the hearth in the great room, where Oswald could have taken a spill under Maroni’s wrath. He kneels to examine it but stops when he hears something, partially satisfying and partially terrifying.

            Jim hears someone crying in the boiler room near the stove.

 

The door to the room is locked, as Jim expected, and it takes all his might to break the lock and open it. He stumbles through the doorway and comes to a stop right at the base of the stairs, where he's given a firsthand feel at the murky conditions of the cellar, a blackened room packed with boxes and dusty shelves. The first thing Jim notices is the smell - rotten, unknown things that make his stomach roil, and the biting cold through the wool of his winter clothes. While it’s winter outside – the car thermometer read 24 when they finally made it to the house – the cellar is ten degrees colder than the rest of the house due to the dark and the damp.

There he sees Oswald down to his underwear and shivering, tears dripping off his nose and onto his thighs. He’s covered in cuts, scrapes, and a rather nasty bruise across his face. He’s dirty from where he’s been sitting on the packed dirt of the cellar floor. His hands are handcuffed around a large pipe and he rests his head against it when he spots Jim at the top of the stairs. His eyes well with tears and he begins to cry anew, embarrassed and lowly.

            Oswald’s skin is blue around his hands and neck when Jim inches closer. He holds his left shoulder at an awkward slant and winces from time to time as his body shakes. Both eyes blackened and mouth chapped and cracked, Oswald’s trembling so loud Jim can feel it, his teeth clattering with the cold. Instantaneously, without much thought, Jim shrugs off his jacket and kneels to put it on Oswald, offer him some modesty.

            “Oh, Jesus,” Jim offers, the first words he’s spoken since he left the police department, and his throat is tense. He fumbles around in the room for something to break the metal of the cuffs. When he finds a pair of bolt cutters and whittles at the center of the chain, Oswald’s grunting fills the room as the metal catches on the blisters the cuffs have formed. “Ah shit, Jesus Christ.” Oswald’s knees draw to his chest in shame when he is finally freed from the restraints. His face begins to splinter with unshed tears and he looks up at Jim pitifully.

Jim just sits there, teeters on his ankles, and listens to him sob, great belly heaves that don’t seem possible for such a small man. Through his foggy mind, Oswald remembers Maroni reaching across the table they were both seated at and knocking him out with one mighty punch - showing off that aforementioned strength he was so damn proud of - and wailing on him while he was unconscious. The pain was so great Oswald didn’t have time to fight back as Maroni left him in the cellar. He remembered feeling helpless and frozen as Maroni worked him over good, wrangling apart limbs from sockets and skin from body.

Jim's still squatting in front of Oswald, looking him over quickly. “Fucking Jesus, he didn’t have to take your clothes,” Jim says blankly, still sitting on the floor. At this point, he doesn’t know whom he’s trying to comfort, Oswald or himself. He wasn't expecting this, rather two ends of a spectrum - dead or alive. Nothing in-between was even considered to Jim. Jim hears someone coming and briefly goes for his gun in his waist holster but reminds himself that they're no threat to anyone this deep in Gotham's woods. Jim relaxes and waits for Oswald to compose himself.

Harvey’s footfalls get closer and soon he is the third in the room, standing awkwardly at the top of the stairs.

“What, did Maroni leave him here?” Harvey asks, confused.

“Yeah, naked and with the shit beaten out of him,” Jim explains, arms suddenly stiff with the cold his jacket once hid him from. Oswald’s crying slows, and he drags the back of his hand over his face to preserve some sense of modesty his brain thinks he possesses in this moment, naked with a cop’s jacket over him. “Let’s get him in the car. We’ll take him back to the station and see what the chief wants us to do with him.” Jim tosses Harvey the keys, something Harvey shoved at him angrily once they entered the house. “Crank it up and put the heat on high. I’ll be out there in a second.” Without a second word, Harvey walks out.

Jim’s attention goes back to the other injuries Oswald has. Despite the cuts, scrapes, and blossoming bruises that litter his body, Oswald’s knee is at a crooked angle, one visible step down from its adjacent knee and looking inflamed. He hisses and turns away from Jim when he lays a hand on it.

“It’s dislocated and I should probably put it back for you,” Jim confirms, looking around to Oswald’s leg to see if it’s gone through the skin any more than he could see initially. It hasn’t, and looks like a clean dislocation that could be put back into place quickly if he moves.

“It doesn’t hurt, please don’t hurt me anymore,” Oswald begs, hiccupping. Jim shakes his head and helps Oswald to a kitchen table, sweeps the ragged tablecloth and debris off to the floor and motions for him to sit on it. Oswald hesitates, balancing carefully on his good leg, and soon Jim gets a little fed up and sweeps him up, one arm behind Oswald's knees, mindful of the dislocation and the other under his arms, setting him down onto the edge of the table. There Oswald fidgets, picking at the bleeding skin at the end of his ragged knuckles. Jim sweeps the floor length coat off of Oswald's legs to give him a better look at the warped knee. Jim probes at it gently and apologizes beneath his breath when Oswald moans softly. 

“I have to put it back or it could really damage you,” Jim insists, a little softer now that he sees that Oswald’s going back into frightened animal mode, eyes holding pupils dilated into pits of blue and black. “Here, hold my hand.” He takes hold of Oswald’s left hand in a soft hold, grabs ahold of Oswald's left foot to offer more traction, and jerks Oswald’s leg up and around to knock the knee back into place. In preparation for the screaming he knows is about to occur - Jim can count on both hands the amount of knees, elbows, and shoulders he put back into place in Iraq - Jim closes his eyes, angles his head down, and braces for impact.

As soon as the teeth-jarring crunch of cartilage easing back into bone sounds, indicating that the knee has made its way back to its proper place, Oswald sobs loudly, a quiet but escalating scream that leaves Jim’s ears ringing. Jim looks up, opens his eyes from their tight squeeze, and sees large tears streaming down Oswald’s face, his chest shaking. Oswald is staring at the ceiling, chest heaving and breath shaking out of his mouth.

Jim tries as much as he can in his current position to let Oswald lean on him, rest his chin on Jim’s shoulder. Oswald grips him only a little, his right arm laid across Jim’s shoulder blades.

The jacket goes back onto Oswald, who tries his best to roll his entire body into the warmth of it but takes care with his injured leg. Jim begins to stand, having knelt lightly on the ground for traction, and offers Oswald a hand. With shaky legs and heaving chest, Oswald stands, and ends up leaning on Jim as the two walk out of the house. Jim’s jacket looks comically big on Oswald but he manages to engulf himself in the wool, hides his hands in the deep pockets.

They walk slowly to the car, Oswald’s gait further hindered by the welts on the backs of his thighs and shoulder blades. Jim’s nonetheless patient, allowing him to stop when the pressure on the bottom of his feet is too much to bear. Eventually, they make it, and Jim helps Oswald to lay down in the backseat. Jim turns the seat warmers on high and lets him lie down across the seats, bundling the jacket around him tighter.

Harvey’s sitting in the driver’s seat and waits wordlessly for Jim to settle their newest charge. The car is sweltering once Jim gets in, heat almost too much to handle, but then he remembers who’s the one that’s been sitting in a dank cellar for almost two days. He handles the heat, rolls his sleeves up to stick his forearms against the cool glass, and waits out the car ride back to Gotham.

            Oswald’s silent the whole car ride, and Jim looks back just as soon as they make it out from the house to see him asleep on his side, arms pillowed beneath his head, his left knee angled to relieve the pressure Jim’s already assuming to be agonizing. He doesn’t move an inch even as the car rocks through back roads. The three of them make it back to Gotham in that same deafening silence. No one in the trio, in the midst of this unknown danger and violence, has anything to offer in order to relieve the situation.


End file.
